


On the Outside

by hauntedd



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 07:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2842586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedd/pseuds/hauntedd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three lies you tell yourself in prison that are better than the truth, and one that isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Outside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurlb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/gifts).



Once in a while, Taystee dreams of the outside. She’s been in and out of the system her entire life, so she knows there’s some bullshit, but it’s a nice fantasy, sometimes. She’ll get out, stop dealing, start putting her skills to work and become a bookkeeper or some shit. 

A real bookkeeper, not a drug bookie—like an accountant—she’s read enough books, and she has _previous experience_ (the job lady told her to lie and call herself an independent contractor. It was cleaner than handling the money in a drug ring. White people with money didn’t like to see that shit). 

And this time—Poussey is there to believe in her. Taystee hasn’t ever had that—except for Vee, but that bitch is shady, even if she is the closest thing she’s had to a mom. She still loves her though, even when she’s in here and Vee is on the outside. Vee is family.

You don’t fuck with family.

So when she gets called in for her hearing and they take up her appeal, Taystee is fucking ready for this shit. She’s got a plan, a resume, and her friends back at Litchfield who believe in her. Taystee is on top of the fucking world.

But after a few days on the outside, with only _we’ve gone with another candidate_ , _no_ , and _fuck no_ to her name, Taystee loses hope and calls her parole officer. She begs and cries and pleads to stay in—ain’t nobody around to give a fuck about her out here. If all the people she knows are dead or criminals, she’s going to stay a criminal or wind up dead. Taystee doesn’t want that for herself. She wants to come back to Litchfield, get her head right, and try again.

So Taystee returns.

~*~

Rosa drives for a while after running Vee over with the prison van. She has no hair but she imagines the wind whipping it back like it used to, before, when she was robbing banks and living for the thrill of the chase. If she is going to die, she wants to do it on her own terms—taking out the scourges of Litchfield and coming to peace with her last few weeks on this miserable earth.

If her body would let her, Rosa would hit up a bank. Go out in a blaze of glory with money lining her pockets and no one forgetting her name. The Cancer Caper—it has a nice ring, the kind of shit that people make into movies. Maybe one of those skinny bitches that she sees on screen would play her—Penelope Cruz, the one who was dating Tom Cruise a while ago.

Rosa is not skinny anymore. She is not so pretty anymore, either. Cancer has robbed her of her waistline and her youth but at least that little shitpot will live. Yusef will not know the pain of your organs shutting down one by one—he is free, he is alive.

The radio fades out and static bleeds over until it switches signals. Rosa doesn’t change it, curious what will play when she crosses over. It’s a news station, and she listens, wondering if they’ve realized yet that she’s gone.

_Yusef Robb, that sixteen-year-old with cancer we had a fundraiser for passed away yesterday._

Rosa pulls over the van, her eyes too blurry to drive. She flips off the radio and screams, her sobs wracking her body as she chokes on the sound. Her little shitpot is _dead_ , and it is all her fault. He is dead and it was all for sixty-three dollars and to prove that she still could pull it off.

The curse survives. All the men she has robbed banks (and nurses) with are dead, and yet she is still miserably, worthlessly alive.

This is the worse punishment.

~*~

The restaurant stories Piper tells her fill her with pride. It may be a bit run down, but this is all that Red has on the outside. Her sons are idiots who don’t visit often enough, her relationships with her daughters in prison are still strained, but the restaurant remains, a reminder of all the good left to her on the outside.

She can still imagine it, months and years later. A line outside the building, pirozhkis feeding hundreds of New Yorkers by the day—they are not as good as her pirozhki, but they do not ruin it completely. When she is feeling particularly depressed, Red will still ask Piper for detail—it’s like a bedtime story. The way that the meat melted in her mouth and the flaky crust of the bread sing her to sleep during her darkest moments.

It is a reminder that her sons love her. They have kept her memory alive through her restaurant. They care even if they are stupid with too much of their father in them.

When she gets out of Litchfield, her red hair no longer dyed and her skin starting to pucker and fold, Red demands she see her restaurant. To see the good work her sons have done in her absence.

They say nothing. And in their silence Red learns the truth—the restaurant closed a long time ago and Piper had _lied_. Her sons do not love her the way that she needs and for the first time since leaving, Red wishes she were back there, at Litchfield, where women lie to give her hope instead of children who say nothing in the hopes that she does not notice their failures.

Red always notices.

~*~

Prison doesn’t change you if you let it. That’s the refrain that Piper clings to even after she’s back at Litchfield from furlough. _That women you are in there—that’s not who you are_. Her parents’ words serve to fuel her delusions because before this she was the perfect one, the good one and maybe she still is, deep down. 

After getting rid of Fig and with Caputo in charge, Piper finds that she has fewer wars to fight, less shit to dig up. She is at peace, or so she tells herself and her work is done. Things are back to normal, she is back to normal and she ends her time without another issue. Sure Larry is dating Poppy, sure she brought Alex back here because she couldn’t stand the thought of being alone; truly alone, but she’s still Piper.

Isn’t she?

When the time comes and Piper takes in her first breath of freedom, her parents are there, waiting, but all Piper can think about is what she was told at the funeral, as if it were a statement of fact.

_I’m sure you’re anxious to turn back into your old self._

What does that even mean? Is she the prison version of Cinderella, except she’s turning back into a princess after a magical jaunt in a federal penitentiary? 

It’s then that the truth hits her square in the face. Prison does change you. Wholly, completely—she will forever be a felon who knows about tampon sandwiches and race-based _tribes_ and that people are not equal, despite what the constitution says. She knows that the world isn’t fair and is made up of both men and women who abuse their powers and when questioned hide the offending party away, stick them in the SHU. 

But Piper also knows about women like Sister Ignalis, like Nicky, like Watson and Yoga Jones. She knows now that criminals are complex people and that maybe what she was doing, back with Alex, isn’t as innocent as she’d thought when she went in. She wasn’t a victim, in the end. Piper had committed a crime, transported drug money and fed into a system that kept women like Nicky high and coming back for more.

Prison did change her. And she’s not anxious to return to a life that she doesn’t know anymore. While she might not know who the fuck she is on the outside, Piper is ready to grow up and continue to evolve.

Sometimes the truth is better than the lie.


End file.
